Yesterday I started to trace the wiring for our doorbells and figure out why they aren’t working (they haven’t worked since we moved in.) So I’m happily tracing away (a bit difficult since part of the basement has been finished and hence obstructs me figuring out where the wires are going) and then, whah, why the heck does the doorbell wiring appear to be connected to the telephone system? Anyone seen something like this before or am I just going crazy? (Okay we know the answer to the last one.)
Bat's Sizzling on an Open Fire
Last night we went to see the new Batman movie. After attempting to see it at Paul Allen’s Cinerama (it was sold out), we headed down to the standard mall theater in downtown Seattle to view said film. Verdit for me: meh.
But what I found interesting was thinking about the reason for why I didn’t much like the movie. This is obviously because I am not a bat nor a superhero nor a heroine nor do I live in Gotham. Plus the portrayal of Two Face just hit to close to home. See how easy it is, kids, to analyze movie reviews when you just take reviewers biases into account!
Monday’s are snarky, snark snark days.
Hacking Vision?
An interesting idea from Mark Changizi from RPI: can one design pictures which, when interpreted by your vision, perform a computation? Press release here (note to RPI public relations department: you should probably make it so that the webpage address of your press releases can be copied from the browser address bar. Somewhere a web designer should be shot.) and paper in Perception published here.
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Every Thursday I Go Jeffersonian On You
Yesterday the New York Times, ran an article Absaroka, a proposed state between Wyoming, Montana, and South Dakota which never was. Which reminded me of the state that I grew up in, the great state of Jefferson. What, you’ve never head of the great State of Jefferson?
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We Beat the Reaper by Living Well
Randy Pausch, Carnegie Mellon computer science professor, passed away early today. If you haven’t watched Pausch’s last lecture, you should:
This lecture, when I first saw it, reminded me how important humor is for teaching. In other words, my students from last term can blame all my silly jokes on Randy.
Fraud Fighting Quantum Computers
From Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days
…Its one of those things where, in the end, fraud is so nondeterministic that you need a human or a quantum computer to look at it and sort of make a final decision…
Fight determinism with determinism, but fight nondeterminism with nondeterminism! I like it! But can you fight determinism with nondeterminism? Why am I now singing “I shot the nondeterminism, and the nondeterminism won?”
(I’m pretty sure Max is waxing poetic here, cus from all I’ve read about him he’s a pretty sharp cookie.)
Web Based Applications
You know that web based applications have really entered into your life when you click the Firefox icon and you wonder why the browser doesn’t appear and cover the document you are editing.
Englishmen Alone Form Perfect Queues of Length One
Standing in lines is the bane of my existence. Okay, well maybe not, but spending time around universities certainly increases the percentage of time I spend pressing the queue. The good thing about lines in university towns is that they often move fairly fast. The bad thing is that, well, you’re standing in line. And, with a nice British last name like “Bacon,” you can bet that I’m a stickler for proper line standing. Proper? Oh yeah. Here are the offenders. Which are you?
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TiddlyPac
For those of you interested in TiddlyWiki and who happen to live in the great city of Seattle, there will be an informal meetup for TiddlyWiki enthusiasts this Saturday, June 26. For details see: TiddlyPac.
I Like My Facts Well Done and Humorless
The Scienceborg is all abuzz about some Sizzle movie, with all sorts of good and bad reviews, and gnashing of the teeth about whether the movie stunk or whether it was the best thing since the invention of sliced ham (few know that this event was much more important than the invention of sliced bread, which is vastly overhyped.) A good way to waste your time, I suppose, but I thought I wasn’t going to get much out of it, you known, in terms of actually getting any good insight or educational crap like that. But then I discovered Chris C. Mooney’s post on the whole thing. (Chris is lucky, he can use his middle initial. If I use mine, my initials are DMB. As in not so bright.)
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